Israeli officials claim 80-90% of Gaza deal settled, but core issue of ending war unresolved
Following Trump-Netanyahu White House dinner, officials say majority of truce terms agreed; Qatari foreign ministry says negotiations will still ‘need time’
Following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting Monday evening with United States President Donald Trump, senior Israeli officials said negotiations on a hostage release and ceasefire deal with Hamas have settled most issues, while touting the supreme coordination between Jerusalem and Washington on Gaza, Iran, and broader regional developments. However, the core issue of bringing the war to an end is unresolved.
“On a hostage deal, we are coordinated… We hope it will lead to a breakthrough. Hamas’s response to the Qatari proposal was, in essence, no. But the gaps are small enough for us to enter talks with them, and we hoped the answer would be yes, and then it would take a few days. It can take more time, but we are working on it,” Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, who took part in the White House meeting, told reporters after the dinner.
As a third round of indirect negotiations on an agreement began in Doha on Tuesday morning, a senior Israeli official told reporters that 80 to 90 percent of the deal with Hamas has already been settled. The final stage of talks could take more than a few days to conclude, the official said.
A spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that negotiations will “need time.”
“I don’t think that I can give any timeline at the moment, but I can say right now that we will need time for this,” Majed Al-Ansari told a Doha news conference. “What is happening right now is that both delegations are in Doha. We are speaking with them separately on a framework for the talks. So talks have not begun, as of yet, but we are talking to both sides over that framework.”
According to a report in the Qatari newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, there has been progress made in negotiations on the clause regarding the mechanism for bringing humanitarian aid into Gaza. The report claims that Hamas is demanding that during a ceasefire aid be brought into the Strip by the United Nations, rather than the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
‘Total coordination’
Though Netanyahu was expected during his Washington visit to face intense pressure from Trump and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to move the Gaza talks forward, Israel described complete coordination between the two sides.
“We have an opportunity to finally get a peace deal,” Witkoff, who is slated to fly to Qatar this week to participate in the talks, told reporters just ahead of the dinner meeting.
After the dinner, a senior Israeli official asserted that Israel and the US enjoy “full trust and coordination…Total coordination.”
Mediators in the negotiations for a deal have been notified that Trump expects them to secure an agreement this week, an Arab diplomat and a second individual involved in the talks told The Times of Israel on Monday night.
A Palestinian source close to the talks told AFP Tuesday morning that “the discussions are still focused on the mechanisms for implementation, particularly the clauses related to [IDF] withdrawal and humanitarian aid.”
Negotiators in Doha also discussed the parameters of Israel’s partial withdrawal from Gaza during the proposed 60-day ceasefire. An Arab diplomat said Israeli officials had arrived with a map outlining their envisioned pullback. While Hamas initially demanded a return to Israeli troop positions from before the March 2 collapse of the previous truce, the diplomat said the group had shown some flexibility.
The core dispute — whether the deal would constitute a temporary pause, as Israel insists, or a permanent end to the war, as Hamas demands — remained unresolved.
While the precise criteria that Israel or the US intend for a post-war Gaza remain unclear, Israel’s endgame in the talks envisions a territory in which “there is no more Hamas,” a senior Israeli official said in Washington Tuesday morning.
The goal is to see “Hamas taken apart. It has to lay down its weapons. Its people have given up. The leaders have been exiled. Another force has taken over the territory and prevents the use of weapons,” the official said.
“There has to be a system there that manages life,” the official added, saying. “Maybe for a certain amount of time, it is us…I’m not sure that if we’re not there for a certain stage, that we’ll be able to pass it on to someone else.”
The official also said that Israel is convinced Trump is serious about encouraging Gazans to emigrate.
“After tonight, I am [convinced],” the official said, adding that “the plan is alive, what is needed is operational coordination, not only the aims, but how we achieve it. And that is what we discussed. The desire is there.”
On Iran
Jerusalem and Washington also see eye to eye on Iran, an Israeli official said Tuesday morning, adding that the two countries saw full cooperation even prior to Israel’s 12-day aerial campaign against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program and military last month, which culminated in the US joining the offensive.
“We had diplomatic coordination before the attack, military coordination during the attack, and now once again diplomatic coordination,” the official said, speaking in English.
“We have very significant accomplishments” in Iran, the senior official added, “and we want to preserve them…I measure my words — there has never been such coordination.”
The close ties are based on “trust that has been created gradually,” the senior official continued, not only through what has been accomplished together, but also the manner in which it was accomplished.
According to the official, Trump’s April announcement alongside Netanyahu that the US would pursue direct nuclear talks with Iran did not surprise the Israelis, as “we talked to [Trump] before.”
The official added that last month, Israel “didn’t ask for and didn’t receive a green light from Trump to attack Iran.”
“You have it wrong,” the official told Israeli press.
“There is a different relationship now,” said the official, a bond that is maintained “because there is a large public in the US that [Netanyahu] can influence, because public sentiment influences leaders. There is also a public that opposes, but there is a very strong base here, so you have strength that maybe doesn’t exist in other countries.”
“Obama wrote this in his book. Read what he wrote in his autobiography. ‘I could do whatever I wanted, just not with Israel.’ There is a reason for this,” he continued. “With Trump, it works in the opposite manner: We agree on things, we don’t have that problem. But you also don’t need to get approval. He understands that we have existential needs.”
“You have to get to know him, you have to talk to him in a small forum, to understand how unique he is, how different he is,” the official added.
Before meeting with Trump, Netanyahu sat down with Witkoff and with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday. Both meetings lasted around two hours and covered “the negotiations, Gaza, and some other topics,” a senior Israeli official said.
Continuing his visit, the premier was slated to meet US Vice President JD Vance Tuesday morning, before additional meetings with US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader John Thune, Democratic Senator John Fetterman, and other senators.
The official added that if the need arises, there will be another meeting between Netanyahu and Trump.
1 comment:
The devil is, indeed, in the details.
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